In wireless systems it is often desired to use all channels (or all of the allocated spectrums) in every cell. These systems are called N=1 reuse systems. In such systems it is possible for a mobile station (MS) to receive signals of equal power on the same channel from two base stations (BS).
Current methods of solving this problem include CDMA where different codes are transmitted by different BSs and, depending on the spreading factors, a signal can be extracted from the interference with greater reliability. Unfortunately, in such systems spreading reduces the overall through-put in direct proportion.
Another solution involves frequency hopping. In this case the BSs randomly select channels to send to the MS and if only a few mobiles are in use the chances of collisions can be made small because each channel is used only a small fraction of the time. However, as loading (increased MSs) increases, collision possibility increases until with 100% of possible users on at each BS collisions occur in every instance. The damage due to interference done at each instant depends upon the instantaneous transmitter power of the interfering BSs and the relative distances the MSs are from their respective BSs.